Intel Core i5-4430 CPU LGA1150 Haswell Processor Review

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Blender

Blender is an open-source, free content creation suite of 3D modeling, rendering, and animation capabilities. Originally released in 2002, it’s available in versions for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and several Unix distributions. It supports rigid and soft-body objects and can handle the draping and animation of cloth, as well as the rendering and animation of smoke, water, and general particle handling.

Our Blender test renders multiple frames of an animation of a rotating chunk of ice, with translucency and reflections. Rendering of this model uses ray-tracing algorithms and the program reports the rendering time for each of the animation’s 25 frames. The results are a summation of the rendering times for all frames and the lower the score, the better.

Blender is limited to a maximum of 8 threads, so these four-core Hyper-Threaded CPUs are a good match for it. Hyper-Threading isn’t as good as four more real cores, but it’s still enough to let the 4770K post a score that’s 35% better than the 4430.

POV-Ray

The Persistence of Vision ray tracer is a free, open source 3D modeling program that uses ray-tracing algorithms to generate realistic three dimensional images. Ray tracing is very computationally intensive, and the POV-Ray program has a handy built-in benchmark to let you check the performance of your system.

Again, this is what we’re coming to expect, although the 4770K’s lead is a little smaller here than it is elsewhere.